Sound was first recorded by a machine over 150 years ago; since then, audio technology has jumped forward in massive leaps. 

What once required a dedicated machine to reproduce a tinny, inaccurate sense of a piece of music is now just an expected part of any number of gadgets. And listening to it can be as easy as using dedicated speakers on the device itself.

However, if you want to get the best from your listening experience, you’ll want something that’s been designed to optimise audio quality. Luckily, that’s pretty easy to get as well, especially with Rentoza subscriptions. Now, you don’t only have access to great sound, but you’ve got a huge range of options to choose from, each suited to a different use case.

Here’s our picks of the best audio gear for every need.

Home Audio

Modern smart TVs are pretty fantastic. Incredible viewing from just about any angle. Incredible contrast, brightness, and colour, thanks to LED panels. Light and thin. Unfortunately, that last pro is also a con when it comes to sound.

Because TVs have gotten so thin, the speakers inside them have suffered. They tend towards trebly tinniness, with poor bass and a lack of clarity – not what you want when you’re about to put on Marvel’s latest blockbuster.

Now, you could go all-in and upgrade to a genuine 5.1 surround sound system. But that means a multi-component system, including an amplifier to make it all work, and we hope you enjoy spending hours working out the spacing for everything.

Or instead, you could go for a half-step that will massively improve your listening experience without forcing you to spend hours dedicating yourself to becoming an amateur audio engineer: A sound bar.

The Samsung Essential C-Series Soundbar 2.0 offers a huge improvement on standard TV speakers, while taking up as little space as possible. Its two-channel design delivers punchy stereo for the big action scenes, while it has more than enough clarity to ensure clear dialogue during the talky bits. It’s wireless, too, so you can connect your phone to it for your next house party. 

The Samsung Essential C-Series Soundbar 2.0 is available for R190 on a monthly Rentoza subscription.

Smartphones

Chances are, you do most of your music or podcast listening on your smartphone. Don’t you deserve to hear it at its best? 

The ideal option for on-the-go listening remains a pair of over-ear headphones – some proper cans, in other words. Because of their bigger design, they’re able to fit more sound tech, so you’re guaranteed a better experience.

The Beats Solo 3 epitomise this philosophy, offering a great combination of comfort and quality. They’re compatible with both Android and Apple devices, offering spatial audio and great bass performance for headbangers and hip hop heads alike. And with up to 40 hours of battery life, they’ll keep going as long as you need them to.

For an even more upscale option, Apple aficionados can grab the Airpods Max, the top of Apple’s personal audio pile. They may look sleek, but their metal construction makes them tough, and they’re also absolutely packed with cool tech: 

• Full set of optical and motion sensors
• Nine microphones
• Active noise cancelling, transparency mode, adaptive EQ, and spatial audio with dynamic head tracking
• Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity
• Charging case

Get your pair of Beats Solo 3 headphones from R490 a month, or the Airpods Max from R1 190 per month on a Rentoza subscription.

Active Lifestyles

While headphones deliver the highest quality of audio, they’re still not the most convenient way of pumping sound to your ears. That honour goes to earphones – designed to sit securely in your ears when you’re on the move.

Earphones (or buds, as a lot of them have become known) have seen perhaps the greatest leaps forward in the last few years, going from little more than smaller wired headphones to their current form: Sleek, discrete little powerhouses of tech. Their smaller footprint makes them easy to slip into a pocket or bag when you need to get going, while they’re also incredibly secure in use, making them ideal for everything from bus commutes to the gym.

Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Live are an excellent example of the genre, showcasing a uniquely ergonomic fit, up to six hours of continuous playtime, active noise cancellation, and great sound for the package.

On the Apple side, the Airpods 3rd Gen provide a similar experience, including access to your personal smartphone assistant when you don’t feel like using the touch controls, or getting your phone out of your pocket.

For a simpler experience, the Huawei Freebuds 5i offer a no-frills experience, but can manage up to 10 hours of playback time (with noise cancelling disabled).

The Galaxy Buds Live are available with a monthly Rentoza subscription starting at R400, the Airpods 3rd Gen start from R420, while Huawei’s offering can be yours for only R220 a month – and of course, they all come with charging cases.

Gaming

As gaming has advanced, the popular emphasis tends to be on the way games look. But advancements in sound apply as much to gaming as it does to music. New games are pushing the bounds of audio further than ever before, even experimenting with binaural audio (not sure what binaural audio is? Listen to this with headphones on).

At the same time, the rise of multiplayer gaming has made the ability to communicate with online partners super important to everything from shooters to puzzle games.

Enter Sony’s Pulse 3D Wireless Headset. Designed specifically to work with the PlayStation 5, these headphones offer full 3D audio, so you can tell exactly what’s happening where. They also include a noise-cancelling microphone, making sure that you can be heard loud and clear when you need to be.

The Sony Pulse 3D Wireless Headset is available from R180 per month with a Rentoza subscription.

Live Loud

One of the great joys of modern life is just how much content there is to consume. Incredible music, amazing movies – and that’s not even mentioning the galaxy of content on social media, or Youtube, or gaming.

With Rentoza audio subscriptions, you won’t just be able to enjoy your content, you’ll have the opportunity to gain new perspectives on the music and movies, TV shows you thought you knew, and gaming experiences beyond anything you imagined possible.

With Rentoza, you can embrace the noise, not the commitment.